Not from around here

I think there are more Christmas lights than ever this year. I love it. My husband the angel put up our beautiful lights early  - even earlier than I could have convinced myself! There was a warm day the week before Thanksgiving and he put them up.

I love it. I love decorating but it takes me about 20 minutes to be bored, though looking at the lights makes me sooooo happy. I always wanted a house that could have big colorful bulbs around the roof and now we have it. I conned him into turning the lights on sooner than Thanksgiving (his cutoff that I cut short by discretely plugging in the garage lights) and it’s great. He put up the tree one day, too, and I wasn’t a bit sad to miss the decorating. Unfortunately, we’ve discovered the doggeroos think it is a back scratching post (why did this not happen last year?) so now it’s up on a side table. Ridiculous but keeps the tree, ornaments, and presents safe.

This is my Annie, putting up with me attempting to take a Christmas card shot. It’s cute, but she looks even more miserable than she was! So we nixed that one. Still cute, though. Don’t worry, it was only 2 or 3 minutes she was wearin’ em. Not a fan, though.  Guess she’s not into the holiday season just yet.

I love my car. I also love the fact there is a VW dealership here in town - they aren’t all that common, but it really does make things easier when you are, for example, going insane because your car is emitting an eerie squeaking noise at random. The noise stops when I break and turn, doesn’t happen at low speeds, and sometimes is present, sometimes isn’t.

I thought I was going crazy for awhile and on Black Friday, after I tackled the mall fun (another post, another post) I decided to call VW. I had had enough. They fit me in right away and $40 later my problem wasn’t solved, per se, but on it’s way: my parking brake has siezed and is stuck partially on. Not the most detrimental thing in the world but definitely a pain in the butt. Parts weren’t in stock. But, I did get a free car wash and sanity out of the deal, not to mention pride in my purchase: my 2003 Jetta that has almost 85k is paid off and has never needed any major service until now. If it weren’t for this parking brake issue the rear brakes would be good for another year or so - five years and 100k on a set of brakes is not bad (hubby has replaced his 2x already at 90k).

Anyway, having a local dealership is great - I can bring it back, get a shuttle to my place, and be picked up to get my car back. I can get a loaner car overnight. They have late hours, which I also love. And hopefully by next week they’ll have the parts and have fixed that insane squeaking tire of mine.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! We are not brave enough to have Thanksgiving at our house (we probably never will be) but thankfully that’s ok since Ryan’s family is big into having holidays at their house. For years we’ve been going to Aunt Wendy’s house for thanksgiving…she is an amazing cook! When you’re first invited to a family holiday you start off bringing the lowest item: bread. EVERYONE brings dessert (yes, it is insane at dessert time!)Though I don’t think I ever had that “honor”of bringing bread, we’ve settled into our own ritual item of baked mac and cheese. I don’t have many things I can call a “specialty”, but that’s the closest to it.

Anyway, we’re off with our goodies but here are some pics:

(Note: I don’t bake, so Ryan does by default. These don’t look even 1/10th of how great they tasted - even I was impressed!)

Kitchen hand towels my mom made us - too cute!

Annie was sad she can’t come with us to Thanksgiving, so she’s gnawing on her toy instead.

Henry a la tongue out as he begs me for some of the yummy smelling food.